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Bar News - September 3, 2004 Rescued from Despair By: [Identity Withheld] NH Lawyer’s Story: Editor’s Note: The following article was submitted to the Bar News by a New Hampshire Bar member who is also a member of New Hampshire Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers (see accompanying article on page 11.) We hope his story inspires others to take advantage of the resources available to members of the Bar who are struggling with difficult personal issues or addictions. I AM AN ALCOHOLIC lawyer. I am grateful to report that I haven’t had a drink for nearly seven years. I don’t know when my drinking became a problem in my life, but I started drinking as a youth and never was what you would call a "social drinker." I drank for the effect, pure and simple. My wife left me in my last semester of law school and I proceeded to drink my way through that semester, the bar review course and, yes, the bar exam. The air conditioning and the leather seats in the L.O.B. took the edge off my hangover and must have soothed my frayed nerves enough to pass. On the surface, my life seemed fine, I didn’t drink during the day, and I told myself that my drinking didn’t affect my work. But it did, I now realize. In 1997, my eighth year in the practice of law, I hit bottom. I was bankrupt (financially, emotionally and spiritually), facing various alcohol-related misdemeanors, including a second-offense DWI, and I was clearly facing, at a minimum, a three-year driver’s license suspension (and the loss of a good job that depended on my ability to drive). That’s if the judge, who had convicted me of my first-offense DWI a mere three years before, didn’t throw the proverbial book at me. My personal life was an utter mess. Without a professional life, I would have had no life at all. I have never felt so hopeless and worthless. Soon after my last arrest, I started making some phone calls. I called the employee assistance program where I worked, mostly to appease my supervisor, and was referred to some treatment programs. I was skeptical, but figured I had to do something with a trial date set for the not-too-distant future. I was at least willing to admit I had a drinking problem and to appear to be doing something about it. I made an appointment with an outpatient rehab program (since closed, as are more than half the programs in existence at the time). By now, my drinking was horrendous, and blackouts were a frequent occurrence. I tried to stop or control it, but I couldn’t. One day, I called the Lawyer’s Helpline number, (603) 224-6060, regularly published in the Bar News. I had absolutely no clue what the Helpline was about, but was trying to cover all the bases, you know—in case the judge asked. The phone call was brief, and I can’t remember the particulars, but I do recall a kind voice and the fact that the woman who answered the call didn’t ask me specifically what my problem was. So imagine my amazement when, an hour or so later, I received a call from an attorney volunteer who proceeded to offer to take me to an AA meeting. I remember asking him, "How did you know my problem was alcohol?" He replied, "It is, isn’t it?" I admitted as much, and he said, "Well, I’ll pick you up Sunday night at 6." And that was just what he did, not just that night, but many times over the next few months, driving more than 50 miles out of his way to do so. Over the next few weeks, some pretty amazing stuff happened. I began a four-week outpatient rehab program, read the Big Book cover-to-cover (Alcoholics Anonymous, the basic AA text), attended more AA meetings, got my first sponsor (the same man that took me to my first meeting), and—most important—experienced, for the first time in many years, a feeling of hope. My alcoholic cravings and obsessions subsided during that first week in rehab, and they have not returned, something that can only be described as miraculous, considering that I had regularly consumed about a liter of liquor a day for the previous five years or so. I completed the rehab program a few weeks before my trial date, stayed sober (just barely, mostly out of fear) and began to attend AA meetings. I remember my rehab counselor telling me that she was surprised at my successful completion of the program because, as she put it, I "think too much." "Keep it simple," an AA mantra, was a difficult concept for me at first, but I slowly came to accept life on its own terms. My first sponsor also took me to my first Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers (LCL) monthly meeting at a big, fancy country club. I was a bit apprehensive, because I rarely felt comfortable in the company of other lawyers (anywhere but in the courtroom), and didn’t know what to expect. Well, I needn’t have worried. I was made to feel welcome from the start, and was frankly pleased to learn that other members of the Bench and Bar had been in the same leaky boat as I. I soon learned that LCL had been in existence for many years, and found myself feeling quite a part of (as opposed to apart from) this group, much as I was beginning to feel about AA. A process had begun, but I was still too fogged up to know it at the time. I was "mocus," one AA old-timer told me, which he defined thusly: "Mocus is when you find yourself out in a field holding a rope, and you don’t know whether you found a rope or lost a horse." I was mocus, all right. Anyway, back to my recovery.... As my keen legal mind had predicted, I was indeed convicted of the second-offense DWI, served three days in the House of Corrections and a week at the Multiple Offender Program, and lost my driver’s license for three years. I was unemployed for about eight months, and then worked part-time for one of my AA friends, as his FedEx guy, which was about all I could handle at that point anyway. I didn’t practice law for about a year and-a-half. But during that period, I followed up on my treatment with a counselor, attended hundreds of AA meetings all over the state (having finally learned to enjoy being a passenger), continued to attend the monthly LCL meetings, met dozens of new (sober) friends, and acquired a measure of humility that only painful losses can provide. I found myself becoming more spiritual and less selfish, and these subtle changes soon produced prodigious results. Since that time, I have had many setbacks and disappointments, but have never felt it necessary to drink. I now realize how much my alcoholic behavior, and perhaps to a greater extent, my alcoholic thinking, had negatively affected the course of my life. But, I continue to abstain from drinking one day at a time, have become an active member of AA and LCL, sponsor other drunks and addicts, and continue to learn how to live a sober and productive life. I have accepted without question or fear one simple fact: As an alcoholic, I can never consume so much as one drink safely. I quit debating that point with myself a long time ago. I opened a small office in my home in late 1999, sought appointed cases, and hired AA friends to drive me to court. In 2001, I bought a small building downtown, renovated it and opened my first real law office. Perhaps the best thing is that my professional life has improved and I now have a personal life, too. My relationships with my son and my family are renewed and healthy. I have become an active member of my community.
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